Allie and Rosemary def. Sienna and KC Spinelli

This match was taped on the October 14th Border City Wrestling show. A solid tag match – Allie and Rosemary make for a fun combo and an interesting contrast. Allie pinned Sienna after a codebreaker/German suplex combination. The crowd were into Rosemary in particular. **1/2

Dan Lambert came out and buried the Impact Zone again for being fake fans. The content of his promo would suggest that Moose and Bonnar absolutely have to win but I’ll be damned his delivery was fantastic. He seemed legitimately furious at the very idea that wrestlers could compete with his MMA team. Hope he sticks around with Lashley after Bound For Glory.

Moose & Yuji Okabayashi def. Katsuhiko Nakajima & Masa Kitamiya

This match emanated from Pro Wrestling NOAH. The NOAH audience has taken really well to Moose—they like his chant and explosive offense. Really fun tag match that gave Moose plenty of shine but also allowed Kitamiya in particular to strut his stuff. It’s really cool that a bunch of NOAH matches have been presented on US TV this year. They provide a different change of pace to the usual Impact fare. ***

This is the exact match that will take place at Bound For Glory, except this was non-title. This was exactly what a six man match that this looks like on paper – high energy, a constant pace, a bunch of dives and a strong preview of what should be one of the best matches on the show at Bound For Glory, especially if they can kick it up a notch to another level. Xavier won with his backflip kick. ***1/4

They aired a bunch of preview packages throughout the show that did their absolute darnedest to hard sell Bound For Glory. There’s not a tonne of depth to many of the stories but I’ll be damned if these packages didn’t squeeze every bit of emotional impact out of what the TV has presented over the last few months. You can see most of them in a single block here:

Gail Kim came to the ring and did an interview about her match vs. Allie and Sienna for the Knockouts title at Bound For Glory. There was an awesome story to tell with a retiring Gail Kim challenging for the Knockouts title ten years after becoming the inaugural champion and this was the closest they came to telling it. They only scratched the surface and its a real shame because there was a superb narrative to spin if they were actually trying.

LAX and Eli Drake def. Johnny IMPACT and oVe

Perfectly fine match but it didn’t really pop in the way you’d hope a go home six man tag like this should be designed to do. IMPACT won when he caught Santana with a roll up. Drake and Adonis beat down IMPACT for a third time in the build up to Bound For Glory before exposing the ring planks and hitting IMPACT with the Gravy Train on them. Beat down angles are only as effective as the babyface promo vowing revenge. Without hearing from IMPACT and what this attack and getting his hands on Drake means to him, there’s no emotional crux whatsoever. This was a good angle, but without understand what revenge means to IMPACT it was considerably less effective. **1/2

Final Thoughts:

The production crew did the majority of the heavy lifting pitching Bound For Glory here and largely did a really good job. The main angles on this show were all perfectly fine but failed to add anything emotionally to most of the key Bound For Glory matches – the card looks fun on paper at the very least.